I don't remember much from grade school, especially in-between second
and fourth grade. It's mostly a blank. I chalk it up to being in
public schools. For all practical purposes I might as well been
asleep. Now that I think about it, for the most part, maybe I was.

To be fair, I didn't really sleep my way through school, although I
did nod off a few times in high school (as did some other kids).
Mostly I daydreamed. I had such an imagination I could shut out the
world and get lost in my dreams.

Yet at the same time there are things I remember vividlyand very
few of them were from school. I lived on the edge of the suburbs, with
a lot of country around me. There was a very large lake about a mile
down the road.

On the weekends I was content to wander around by myself investigating
things. One day I looked into one of those small bodies of water than
come and go with the rain or the lack thereof.

In it were about a thousand tadpoles, which I knew turned into frogs.
There were also what appeared to be tadpoles, only they were about ten
times larger. I discovered those turned into newtswhat we called
mud puppies. I finally found some mud puppies, which, true to their
name, lived in the mud, although I was a bit disappointed to find they
didn't look like puppies. They were kind of cute, though. Much cuter
than toads.

When I wandered down the railroad tracks in-between my house and the
lake I discovered bamboo. It was taller than I was. I had no idea
there was bamboo in southern Illinois. I thought bamboo grew only in
China. I also discovered onions, which I confirmed were onions by
pulling them up and tasting them. They weren't very good.

Then there were the sunflowers I found. They, too, were taller than
me. The seeds weren't too bada lot better than the onions. (I
figure if the economy collapses I can live on onions and sunflower
seeds. And crawdads, which I will get to in a minute.)

Once I found a lit railroad flare that had been tossed off of a train.
It impressed me, because when I put it under water it still burned! I
tried to drown it in mud and it still wouldn't go out. That's when I
realized there are some pretty serious chemical compounds out there,
which is why I was very careful with my chemistry set (I was always
expecting something awful to happen to me, which would have gotten me
into trouble with my parents).

Public school bored me. I considered it something of a prison (my high
school, I swear, did not have windows in any of the classrooms or the
lunchroom). It was not only a prison; it was a boring prison, which is
one of the worst kinds. I did a lot better on my own, only I wasn't
allowed to be on my own, not when in school.

In grade school ever so often the Bookmobile would visit and we were
allowed to check out books. I was in heaven. When I was 11 I picked up
a book about Rommel, who I found out was called the Desert Fox.

Years later in college I had to borrow a typewriter from a girl I
knew. She told me to get it from her father at their house. Her father
taught political science at the university, although I never had a
class with him.

When he gave me the typewriter he said, "The bomb is ready to go. Put
it next to Hitler." I just laughed. He probably thought I didn't know
what he was talking about.

When I returned the typewriter a few days later I said to him, "The
bomb went off but Hitler escaped. Now they're after Rommel."

His eyebrows shot up to his hairline and he said, "It's glad to know
that not all of Kathy's friends are historical and political
ignoramuses." I just laughed, because I was a little embarrassed.

Then I realized I wasn't taught about Rommel in school. I picked it up
on my own. Just the way I learned about the ME-262 on my own, which if
the Germans had got into the air in time would have cleaned the skies
of every Allied aircraft.

That wandering around outside when I was a kid was one of the best
times I had at that age. It was play, but it was the best kind of
playcompletely absorbing. Play isn't necessarily "fun," but when it is
true play it absorbs you. And sometimes it astonishes you.

For example, once at the lake I took a bamboo pole (guess where I got
that from), tied a string to it, put a piece of bread dough on the
end, and lowered it into the lake. When I bought it up there was a
crawdad on the end on it, munching on the bread. I clearly remember
the feeling of surprise. It was more like awe, so much so I put the
crawdad back into the lake.

I was also in awe of the snakes. I didn't know some snakes could swim.
What the hellsnakes that could swim? Would they chase me in the
water? Thank God they couldn't fly. It'd be like something out of H.P.
Lovecraft.

Our generic name for the swimming snakes was "water moccasins." Then
there were the cottonmouths, which when they opened their mouths
(probably to swallow a frog, which I have personally seen) the insides
of their mouths were white. I operated on the assumption they were all
poisonous, although I knew the garter and ribbon snakes weren't.

I didn't bother the snapping turtles either, which were so large they
appeared to be able to take off a finger. They were bigger than a
dinner plate and armored like dinosaurs.

One thing I wished I had at the time was a mentor, some grandfatherly
figure (the kind with a walking stick) who would have gone for walks
with me and explained things to me. I would have sucked it up like a
sponge.

But I didn't have such a mentor. I have met people who told me their
grandfathers used to take them for walks and explain things to them. I
was a little envious.

So, when my nephews were little I used to take them for walks in the
woods and show them things. ("What are those big fuzzy balls in the
trees, Uncle Bob?" "They're full of caterpillars, which turn into
moths." "Really?" "If you think that's something, look at his spider
on the ground dragging this dead moth." "Wow!")

I wasn't honest with them all the time, I'll admit. To this day they
still remember about my swearing dragons lived in the woods. And they
believed it, too, which I knew they would. When you're five you'll
believe just about anything.

Even as a kid I doubted all kids were like me. In fact I seemed a
pretty rare kid (people considered me strange). But I was always
puzzled that not one teacher figured me out. That was their job,
wasn't it? Or did they expect a ten-year-old to figure everything out
on his own?

Is this what happens to teachers who spend years trying to teach 25
kids in a classroom? They just don't have the time and energy to pay
attention to every kid? It's why I think every kid needs a mentor, to
pay one-on-one attention.

I have for years thought the best way to teach a kid is for the
teacher to sit on one end of a log and the student on the other. Then,
if he makes a terrible mistake, you can just catapult him into the
nearest lake.

I am reminded of a scene in the movie, Meatballs. Bill Murray
is playing cards with Chris Makepeace (they're playing for peanuts)
and it's hysterical, since Makepeace ends up winning all of Murray's
peanuts and Murray pretends to be outraged. But Murray is the mentor
and Makepeace (who appeared to be about 12) is the student.

I've always done better on my own. In college I had no intention of
taking any economics classes (spend money for destructive Keynesian
nonsense?), so I took proficiency exams for both Introduction to Macro
and Micro. I got an A and a B. The dean of the department came out and
shook my hand, saying what I had done was almost impossible.

I didn't tell him it wasn't all that hard. I was just motivated by the
thought of not spending two semesters in agony while taking those
classes. I also took proficiency exams for English 101, for that
matter (I got a "Pass" on that one).

I would have preferred taking proficiency exams for about
three-quarters of my degree, only they weren't offered. I'm more of an
autodidact than anything elsea word, by the way, I learned not in
school but from the dictionary.

Some people are made for sitting in class. I was never one of them. It
doesn't necessarily have anything to do with exceptionally high
intelligence. Some guys should be taught to be car mechanics at the
age of 12. "School" is mostly a waste for them.

I could never focus in class. These days, I would have been diagnosed
with Attention Deficit Disorder without Hyperactivity (a fancy
pseudo-scientific term for "daydreaming"). The administration would
probably try to give me psychiatric drugs (I can't call them
"medication").

Outside of class I could focus, when I was allowed to do what I wanted
to doand it was easy. How can anyone focus being forced to sit in
a chair for several hours a day? No wonder the high school drop-out
rate is 50%.

What does it take 12 years to learn in public school anyway? After I
learned to read, write and do arithmetic I don't think I learned one
more thing. For all practical purposes I could have dropped out of
school after the 4th grade.

I won't go so far as Ray Bradbury and claim there should be no schools
at all and kids should educate themselves, but I do understand his
point and can sympathize with it. It couldn't be any worse than people
spending years grinding away getting doctorates in worthless subjects
like Education or Sociology.

Here I will quote from Neil Stephenson's novel The Diamond Age
about an exceptionally intelligent boy who would have never done well
in public school and wasn't educated in oneat first:

"A typical school day for Finkle-McGraw consisted of walking down to a
river to study tadpoles or going to the public library to check out a
book on ancient Greece or Rome." And when he finally made it into a
public high school: "The coursework was so stunningly inane, the other
children so dull, that Finkle-McGraw developed a poor attitude."

A poor attitude? What a surprise.

Kind of like I developed a poor attitude. I still have my report
cards, which have comments on them about what a bad student I was and
how I had such potential, which I never developed because I was
daydreaming and not doing my schoolwork. It might have helped if they
let me smoke cigars in class, which I started doing when I was 16.

No wonder parents are deserting the public schools in droves. They
obviously have more smarts than the public school bureaucratswho
for the most part don't have any smarts at all. In fact, they remind
me of the government assassin/drone/bureaucrat played by Arte Johnson
in the movie The President's Analyst, who lives his life
strictly by one code: "Rules are rules!"

When you don't break the "rules" there can be no progress. And when it
comes to the State, the worst sin of all is to break the rules.
Like daydreaming in class and not doing your homework.